faderift | because it doesn't make sense for me to cry out in my own defense

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because it doesn't make sense for me to cry out in my own defense

WHO: Colin, Alexandrie, Anders, Loki, Kostos, Myrobalan
WHAT: Colin gives up.
WHEN: The evening after the news of the new Divine reaches Kirkwall.
WHERE: Alexandrie de la Fontaine's apartments.
NOTES: CW: Suicide attempt. Physical violence will ensue. Mentions of past sexual violence.

Hearing her name doesn't change anything. He doesn't think he even feels anything at that point--wouldn't know for sure, though, because he doesn't bother to ask himself. He just floats. Quietly closes the apothecary early for the day and posts a sign. Stares down the hallway. Stands still for so long that someone bumps into him on their way. The walls are narrow and cold, still with remnants of the old history in their stains and accents. You can see the marks where there were slave reliefs taken down. And in the old days, at the end of the hall, there would be a door locked and barred.

He drifts down the hallway, stopping to look closely at all the evidence of those who died here, slaves and mages alike. Flattens a palm against the stone as if, across the mirror of the Veil, someone from long ago is touching that same stone. It used to be too much to think about, but it doesn't hurt him now. Not as long as he makes it down the hallway before they lock the door.

The ferry skims over the water streaked pale gold by the late afternoon light. Smoke from the foundry district blows over it as Colin passes through like a ghost, looking back at the Gallows and wondering how many people are there whom he should speak to. He didn't pass any of them on the way to the ferry, so it must not be meant to be. If they can't catch him as he flits away like a moth, he isn't capable of turning around to give them another chance, or seek them out. This hallway is too narrow for him to travel in any direction but one.

The apartment is familiar and lovely, spotless and comfortable. It still feels like the last place he belongs, but he has never belonged anywhere except the place he was taken from too long ago to belong there again. He goes to the little trinket box on a side table and opens it, taking out the cool, smooth contents.

The flask is altogether unremarkable, but his spirit balks at the sight of it because of the color of saffron, the taste of smoke, the dappled pattern of the sun through trees, the gleam of laughter in a friend's eyes. He doesn't have to do this. He can toss it out a window. But his spirit balks at the thought of that, because he remembers climbing into a wall, and being flung against one. He remembers the shreds of an apprentice's robe hanging on the body of an abomination. He remembers frightened Templars shutting and barring the great doors. He remembers the taste of Ser Lutair's spit and seed both, and how to make sure to cover his knees from the cold stone as he got down on them. He remembers ghosting through hallways just like he did today, and for four years, no one stopping him to talk to him. No one asking if something was wrong, or looking closely enough to see it for themselves. No one coming to help, no rescue, only a threat that if he didn't shape up, he would end up Tranquil. Which didn't turn out to be such a bad suggestion. So since there was no escaping his torturer, and showing any signs of being tortured would have earned punishment, he turned himself Tranquil. He spent years as a corpse walking down that empty hallway, unseen and unloved.

He won't go back to it, and he won't shiver through a year or two of war knowing what's coming will be even worse for him. He has always been his only source of mercy, and this is his call. This will be the last time he dies.

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After his escapade with the knife, helping Colin prepare a meal will be distinctly limited to what can be accomplished without any sharp implements. While there will be a great deal of finger-food available to be plated, meats have been pre-sliced by the butcher and bread will need to be torn. In the entirety of the house there is absolutely nothing in the way of available edges, from the larger blades used in the kitchen to the delicate silver of the table-settings to even Alexandrie's embroidery scissors.

That moratorium on finework means that the lady of the house is reading a novel at Colin's bedside upon one awakening. Or she was, at one point. Now her head is tilted to rest against the side of the armchair, her face lax in the sleep that had finally overtaken her. The book rests open on her lap with one of her hands weighting the pages, the other maintaining a very slight hold on one of his. She stirs very slightly as he wakes, and will likely wake herself if he moves.

On waking, Colin senses the unusual--a hand in his. On opening his eyes, he sees Lexie's wan face and is struck by it. How frail she looks, how oddly aged with her features still pinched with worry. While drinking the poison, he hadn't expected to have to see the outcome of his actions. Fate isn't going to let him get away so easily.

He leans in to press a kiss to her forehead.

"I'm sorry."

She wakes with the kiss, as if some sort of fairytale, and immediately a parade of emotions pass across her face one after another like wooden ducks on a string pulled by a child. Relief, anger, joy, worry, relief again, a suffusive unsurety as if she had expected something else from him besides apology. As if she still does.

The book drops from Alexandrie's lap forgotten, its pages bending against the floor as she turns farther towards him and frames his face—living face, wan, but colored. Warm—with both hands, her eyes filling again with tears as she ventures hesitantly.

"You are not angry with me?"

The question is spurred by something, and it's on the surface for him to pluck. She must have found him. She definitely found him, probably less than a minute or so after he passed out. No--after he stopped breathing, because otherwise, she would just think he was asleep. He shakes his head weakly.

"With myself. It was a stupid thing to do. Now everyone's blaming themselves for something I did, and I didn't even want to die. I just couldn't face going back. I still can't."

"Do you still feel so alone?" she asks sadly, thumbing his cheek, "That you saw no other way to escape that fate? That there are not those of us who love you who would do anything to prevent that from coming to pass?" Alexandrie looks down and lets her hands drift to his shoulders, his upper arms before they drop to fold in her lap. "I do not know how to make you feel safe," she says quietly.

And maybe she can't. Maybe he will always have the boy in the wall living inside him. Maybe she could not pull him from that cold lonely place as she had been pulled from hers. Maybe it isn't her after all, who will mean that to him.

It hurts, but she is resigned to it. So do many things.

Colin shakes his head as tears appear in his eyes.

"I thought...I thought of just the people I'd be with in the Circle, not the people I'm with now. Because when that day comes, it's the last time we'll ever see each other. I didn't, I didn't know that when I retreated into that darkness in my head again, you would follow me. I didn't know people did that."

Reaching out has felt impossible for Colin for most of his life. Asking for help when he has no voice. But that didn't stop Lexie from saving him from a place even more treacherous than that wall. Next time he goes there, he knows to go to her.

Edited 2019-04-24 00:54 (UTC)

“You belong with the Inquisition now, they would not be let to take you away. Not until we are victorious. If then they try, I would take the White Spire apart brick by brick with my bare hands before I let them have you.” Alexandrie is fierce and bright when she looks up again and takes his hands, the surety with which she speaks allowing no room for doubt, as if life itself were something she could grip and twist to her formidable will.

“And if nothing else, you will come with me.” She has not spoken to Colin of her plans after the war, not yet. Truly, she has not spoken overmuch to Loki of this. “To Marnas Pell, or Vyrantium. To Minrathous, to aid with reconstruction.” To Tevinter.

“They will not have you again, cher. Never again. You are free.”

All Colin has wanted since Uldred's massacre is to be rescued. Now that someone is offering at long last, something about it feels hollow. It's ornament, purely an expression of her friendship and not at all what he has longed for. What he has longed for doesn't really exist, and even if she could protect him from going to the Circle, that's...great? But there's a different problem at hand, and it's hard to articulate.

He reaches out to squeeze her hand, and keeps hold of it.

"I...yes. If that's what it takes." Leaving everything and everyone he knows behind to live in a country that may or may not exist once the Divine has Exalted Marched all over it. It has to be better than the Circle. But.

"I, I bought the poison to keep for the day they took me away. I wasn't intending to use it before then. Then the news came, and for some reason, I couldn't bear the way I felt. And nothing had particularly changed. I had this sense as though I was finally starting to feel happy, and this ruined it, so I had to get away from how I was feeling. I thought I would feel that way for a year, two years, however long it takes for the war to end. I couldn't let that happen. So it...wasn't really a reaction to the news. Or it was, but the news was just a tipping point. The whole of the problem existed long before. Why I tried to kill myself, the answer starts half a lifetime ago. It's not that I don't trust you. It's that...I don't know what it is. But nothing happened out of any deficiency from you, real or perceived. I didn't try to kill myself because you didn't give me enough reasons to stay. It has nothing to do with anything like that."

Edited 2019-04-28 01:48 (UTC)

She squeezes back, looking sad but having nothing, and knowing she has nothing.

"I wish...

"I wish I were able to banish it for you," Alexandrie shakes her head slowly, and rubs her thumb along the side of Colin's hand before smiling sadly at him. "But I think it is only yours to face." Like another Harrowing. You are alone. You triumph over it, or you die.

"You are very dear to me." It is simply said. He already knows, but that's all she can offer. What it means, if anything, is for him to decide.

"No, no, no," he says softly, bringing her hand to his lips briefly. He is suddenly afraid she is giving up on him, because he absolutely gave up on himself. "I've never had a friend like you. You give me strength. You always have. I need that. My life depends on it."

It is absolutely awful to place that burden on her, but he will say anything to keep her. He reaches out to wrap her in an embrace, his voice shuddering.

"Don't give up. Please. Don't discount what you mean to me, please. You already saved my life."

Surprise flickers across Alexandrie's face, although Colin won't be able to see it, pulled close to him as she is. She makes up for it with the strength of her return embrace.

"I shall never give up on you, nor ever even consider doing so for the barest sliver of a moment," she asserts fiercely. More quietly then, as she turns her face toward his neck, "I mean only that I cannot convince, beg, con, or kill whatever might still sit and wait within you to drag you down. I can only love you and hope it is enough to aid you in fighting it yourself."

Colin's eyes squeeze shut against the tears--relief, exhaustion, shame, sadness. He buries his face against her shoulder and tries to breathe as he clings to her. But she's right. The only person in the world who can slay this demon is him. The struggle against the tears doesn't last long, but when they come, it is quiet and slow.

I cannot convince, beg, con, or kill...

Watery eyes open. In an oddly calm tone for a crying man, he speaks.

"Justice."

The word tolls like a bell in his mouth, round and heavy despite the tears. Alexandrie pulls back slightly to look at his face, confused but searching.

"Justice?"

Lips press together. He meets her gaze despite every desire to look away.

"I want justice."

He has denied it for years. All he wanted was peace and quiet, he said. Freedom to be as boring and mundane as everyone else. He wasn't special enough to have justice. The word doesn't apply to people like him, who have no rights under the Maker. That belief drove him further into despair, and now he is here. But while the world has not really changed, the people he is with can make things happen which he could not. He blinks tears down from his eyes.

"How would you take down the son of a bann?"

Her lips press together as well, in thought, more than ready to offer her expertise in that arena without the need for Colin to qualify the question.

"I should—" she begins, the wheels-within-wheels of her mind already turning, the lightest outline of such a plot beginning to form. She would need to know so many things, but so many things could be easily had. The charcoal of her sketching catches on something, breaks. She pauses and takes a breath. "I should speak with Byerly," Alexandrie says with an odd sort of quietude. Who better to know how a Bann's son falls than the fallen son of a Bann. He had fallen farther under her hand, yes, but she wouldn't have had the opening without his fortunes already laid low.

"I imagine we shall have similar approaches, he and I, but he has greater knowledge of the workings of the nobility of Ferelden." Her lips thin again, this time in hesitance. "Although depending on the Bannorn, he may be more loathe than I to destabilize it."

"He's a second son," Colin clarifies. He sniffles, and finds a sheet corner he can dry his eyes on. He feels raw. "Anders has ways to find him. He actually offered to have him killed for me, but it seemed...well. If you can find a way to keep his da from coming after us, I want justice. And I can't get it from the proper channels."

"True justice cannot be had from the 'proper channels', mon cher," she says with a wan half-smile. "Those with power as established and upheld by the law of a country shall always get what they wish when brought before that law. It is for those who do not have such a thing to find and wield power that operates by other rules: the unspoken custom of the land. Beauty. Artifice. Blackmail. The blade, if absolutely necessary."

Alexandrie frees a hand to touch Colin's cheek again.

"We will take all that can be taken. And if there is to be no we, I will." Her smile becomes brighter, more reassuring. "I have little to spend, these days, but what I have I shall use. Even disfavor can be a weapon, if one knows how to wield it."

And, having wielded it before, she does.

This time, when she touches him, it's different. Before, he hadn't really felt it. Now, his eyes shut, and the tension is sighed out of him. At last, he can feel the comfort she offers.

"All this time, the only person who's been paying for what he did is me." Eyes open, showing a glint of steel. "I want him fucking ruined."

The spark of anger arrives none too soon. It lights up his mind, wakes him up, and he doesn't know why he was so afraid of something that feels so good. Why did he punish himself? Why did he spend all those years boxing himself in, hoping smaller and smaller boxes would keep him safe, when one moment of reaching out could actually make him feel safe?

"Can you do that for me? Can you give me justice?"

"Oui."

She says it with the certainty of a decade of coldness, of hardening. Of artifice, blackmail, beauty made weapon. Of a year that had grown to include poison, bladework, murder.

"Crossing you is crossing me, cher. And from their holdings to their very lives I have made no few regret crossing me."

Colin leans forward to rest his head on her shoulder again, to soak up the comfort he can finally feel.

"His name is Ser Lutair Balfour. He's a Templar." Obviously. "Back in the Circle, he was a Knight-Corporal. Anders and Byerly know about him, and what he did, so you can speak freely with them."

There is a brief flicker of mild irritation across Alexandrie's face at the idea of keeping confidence with Anders, but for Colin's sake she is willing to consider that it was perhaps the stress of the situation that had made his attitude so objectionable. She had not been made overly solicitous by it either, after all.

The small warmth engendered by the idea of working with Byerly to accomplish such a thing rather than being at strained odds is enough to soothe the feeling, however.

"Then I shall," she says, turning her head slightly to kiss his hair. "Should you like to be involved? Or should you prefer us to take care of the matter entirely."

Colin lifts his head at the question, brow furrowed.

"I..."

See that face again? Hear that voice again? Would it be worth it, just so that he can look that ghost in the eye before it's gone? On the other hand, he will always hear that voice and see that face if he keeps doing what he's doing, hiding and fearing. Maybe confronting Lutair one more time will close the door, and he can move on.

"I'll have to think about it."

She nods against his head in reply. She often thinks she would have been well pleased to have been there to see Rolant die. To watch him learn that there were things he couldn't control, things that didn't care for rank or wealth or power. That death took everyone.

At the same time, the smaller place he occupies in her memory, the better. Just as often she is glad he features no more in them than he already does. He deserves to be forgotten.

"Think also upon what justice means," Alexandrie says softly. From their holdings to their very lives, she'd said. It is not a bald-faced statement, but perhaps enough to convey that as far as she is concerned there is no limit to what she will do in pursuit of whatever it is he deems fair.

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because it doesn't make sense for me to cry out in my own defense

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